When NATO was coming into existence in 1949, it was not only being opposed by those who retained their World War II sympathy for the Soviet Union, such as former Vice President Henry Wallace, and conservative non-interventionists lead by Senator Robert Taft, but also by the most influential columnist and political intellectual of the era, Walter Lippmann. In 1947, Lippmann had written a series of articles called The Cold War that criticized the policy of containment—which called for efforts to prevent the expansion of Communism. The containment policy underpins NATO. And it is the intellectual architect of containment, George F. Kennan, who will be discussed shortly. Interestingly, while Kennan first applied the term “containment” to a foreign policy strategy, Lippmann, although he did not originate the term “Cold War,” made it an integral part of the political lexicon.[4]“Cold War Origins—Genealogy of the term,” Encyclopedia of the New American Nation, http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/A-D/Cold-Wa...m.html

Lippmann made a considerable effort to stop the development of NATO. Steel writes: “Lippmann put forth a six-page single spaced document on the German problem for John Foster Dulles to take to the Paris foreign ministers meeting in May 1949. In the memo Lippmann urged the demilitarization and neutralization of Germany, along with the withdrawal of all foreign troops. This plan, he argued, would keep German nationalists in check and remove the need for NATO.”[6]Steel, p. 460. In short, the Red Army’s occupation of central Europe, in Lippmann’s view, only existed because of the existence of Western troops in the vicinity. And if the Western troops were removed, Russia would reciprocate and, in Lippmann’s view, “there would be no more Russian problem today than there had been for a century.”[7]Quoted in Steel, p. 478.

Lippmann’s opposition went for naught and the NATO treaty passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin. Lippmann would express his opposition to NATO once again in 1952 when the alliance proposed to add two new members, Greece and Turkey. Lippmann maintained: “A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”[8]Steel, p. 459. Once again, Lippmann lost the battle.

George F. Kennan, who is widely considered to be the intellectual architect of America’s Cold War “containment” policy toward the Soviet Union in 1946 and 1947, expressed skepticism about the need to create NATO. His biographer John Lewis Gaddis writes that Kennan believed that “[I]f there had to be a military alliance, its members should include only the North Atlantic countries, where there was ‘a community of defense interest firmly rooted in geography and tradition.’ To go further would invite still further demands for protection: there would then be ‘no stopping point in the development of a system of anti-Russian alliances until that system has circled the globe and has embraced all the non-communist countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa.’ By then one of two things would have happened: the alliance would become meaningless like the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, or the United States would have become hopelessly extended, in which case it would have ignored warnings about the increased discrepancy between its resources and its commitments.”[10]John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), p. 333. Such a situation did, in fact, materialize during the Cold War period as the United States established one alliance after the other in various areas of the globe—CENTO (Central Asia], SEATO (Southeast Asia).

In a 1998 interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Kennan described the U.S. Senate’s decision to ratify NATO’s expansion–which in 1999 would add Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to the alliance—as the “the beginning of a new cold war.” He held that “the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else . . . . We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.”[12]Quoted in Thomas L. Friedman, “Now a Word From X,” New York Times, May 2, 1998, http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/opinion/foreign-a...x.html

Kennan said that he “was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.” It seemed to him that Americans failed to realize that “[o]ur differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.” Kennan warned that this expansion showed “little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”[13]Quoted in Friedman, “Now a Word From X.”

Friedman did not disagree with Kennan and saw this development as having a negative effect on peace in Europe. If everything went well, future historians, he surmised, would say that in spite of this NATO expansion, Russia would continue to move along the path of “democratization and Westernization” because of the powerful impact of “globalization and arms control agreements.” However, “[i]f we are unlucky they will say, as Mr. Kennan predicts, that NATO expansion set up a situation in which NATO now has to either expand all the way to Russia’s border, triggering a new cold war, or stop expanding after these three new countries and create a new dividing line through Europe.”[14]Friedman, “Now a Word From X.”

In his concluding remarks in this article, Friedman wrote that “there is one thing future historians will surely remark upon, and that is the utter poverty of imagination that characterized U.S. foreign policy in the late 1990′s. They will note that one of the seminal events of this century took place between 1989 and 1992 — the collapse of the Soviet Empire, which had the capability, imperial intentions and ideology to truly threaten the entire free world . . . And what was America’s response? It was to expand the NATO cold-war alliance against Russia and bring it closer to Russia’s borders.”[15]Friedman, “Now a Word From X.”

In placing blame on Putin, Friedman ignored the fact while his American readers would not expect the European Union to invade Russia—and let us grant that Friedman is engaging in hyperbole here, and would mean the U.S. along with the European Union–it is not clear that Russians could be so sanguine. The United States did not feel secure with Soviet missiles being stationed in Cuba in 1962 and quite likely would not feel so today. And, of course, if Friedman were correct here, there never should have been any concern by Russia about having NATO near its borders, and Friedman never should have identified at all with Kennan’s position in 1998. Both Lippmann and Kennan recognized that the U.S. needed to consider the Russian view—and Russia had historical reasons for being worried about strong enemies on its borders since it had been invaded in the past.

Friedman even denied that Putin sought to protect Russia. “By seizing Crimea and stoking up nationalism, Putin was not protecting Russia from NATO,” Friedman asserted. “He was protecting himself from the viruses of E.U. accountability and transparency, which, if they took hold in Ukraine, could spread to Moscow, undermining his kleptocracy.”[18]Friedman, “Putin and the Pope.”

Note that by making a distinction between Putin’s government and Russia, Friedman implied that the interests of Putin’s “kleptocracy” ran counter to those of Russia. Now Kennan and Lippmann, in line with the thinking of most Americans, did not believe that the Communist government was good for Russia; nonetheless, Kennan and Lippmann realized that it was in the interest of the United States to respect the interests of the Soviet government of Russia in order to avoid a dangerous conflict.

Finally, all of Friedman’s negative views of NATO disappear when he deals with Trump, as would be expected by a mainstream liberal. “How in the world do we put a man in the Oval Office,” Friedman maintained, “who thinks NATO is a shopping mall where the tenants aren’t paying enough rent to the U.S. landlord”?

Friedman’s change of opinion is indicative of the current view of mainstream liberalism. First, there is a definite proclivity to resist anything that Trump proposes—one result of what critics have labeled as Trump Derangement Syndrome. Moreover, there is now a tendency on the part of American liberals to be far more critical of Putin than they were of Soviet Communism. Liberals during the Cold War saw the Soviet planned economic system as being beneficial in some ways. In contrast, liberals find nothing positive in Putin’s system. In short, Putin’s Russia is widely attacked as a “kleptocracy,” as Friedman put it, and for its institutionalization of traditional values–Christianity, anti-abortion measures, natalism, discrimination against the homosexual life-style, and nationalism—which liberals now lambaste as retrograde and harmful to minorities and women.[20]For a discussion of this subject see: Boyd D. Cathey, “Examining the Hatred of Vladimir Putin and Russia,” Unz Review, December 29, 2014, http://www.unz.com/article/examining-the-hatred-of-...ussia/

Liberals’ views of the Russian internal system have impacted on how they judge Russia’s international threat. Mainstream liberals were far less willing to staunchly oppose the Soviet Union despite the fact that its military power was about on par with that of the United States and it promoted a popular global ideology with supporters throughout the world. Today Russia is much weaker militarily, especially in its conventional forces, and has an ideology with little global appeal. Moreover, the expansion of NATO has made it far more threatening to Russia as it now encroaches on Russia’s borders.

This focus on liberals does not mean that they are now the foremost supporters of NATO, which is also being backed by a number of other factions, including: neoconservatives, unchanged Cold Warriors, conservative hawks, and militarists. But the addition of staunch support from liberals for NATO has made that alliance politically invulnerable because of their dominance of the mainstream media.

The upshot of the reference to notable critics of NATO clearly illustrates that one does not have to be a Russian dupe or an ignoramus to question the existence of NATO. And, for various reasons to which this essay has alluded, the value of NATO deserves to be questioned more now than it was when mainstream luminaries Lippmann and Kennan were doing so. This is one thing for which Trump deserves credit, although he does not make a good case for his position. It is unfortunate that he has been moving away from this position as his appointees for national security positions in his administration have voiced their whole-hearted support for the alliance.

One function of NATO is to facilitate the sales of U.S. arms and military systems under the rubric of “NATO standardization.” This also inhibits the development of any competitive European arms industry. Marine Le Pen has called for French withdrawal from NATO and I hope that she will win. I have read, although I can’t find the quote, that Dwight Eisenhower, who favored NATO, said that if American troops were still in Europe ten years after the formation of NATO, that it would have failed in its purpose. The author is perceptive in noticing the complete lack of strategic imagination that characterized U.S. foreign policy since about 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Read More

ReplyAgree/Disagree/Etc.

AgreeDisagreeLOLTroll

These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Troll, or LOL with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used once per hour.

Russia is hated by people from both nodes of contemporary liberalism. From the left it is, as you correctly identify, “for its institutionalization of traditional values–Christianity, anti-abortion measures, natalism, discrimination against the homosexual life-style, and nationalism.” From the right it is for Russia’s rejection of US led global economic hegemony, and for providing an example to many in other nations, unhappy with the globalists vision of an open-bordered paradise, to sign up to the new political movements opposing it. You go on to say that “Russia …. has an ideology with little global appeal.” Don’t be so sure. What both the liberal left and the liberal right respectively hate about Russia sounds pretty good to a lot of people.

From the right it is for Russia’s rejection of US led global economic hegemony,

Russia is not rejecting the Western economic hegemony, but rather has injected itself into it. Simply put the Russian political and especially economic elites and their stolen money literally have emigrated to the West. And they are so dependent, they literally cannot live without the West. Their only purpose in live - plunder Russia and live in the comfort of the West - would be ruined. So it is really difficult to understand what confrontation between Russia and the West may be going on if the former is the part of the latter. If anything is going on, it is a grudge by a house slave to his master.

NATO ought to be called GATO given all the homo stuff that the US is promoting as proxy of globalism.

And it looks like Harry Limes of the World won.

EU is just a playground for globalist Harry Limes.

And the Harry Limes sure stole a lot from Russia in the 90s.
And they made a wreck of the Middle East too.

NATO needs to be scrapped, but EU nations are just whores of Harry Limes who command globalism.
Globalists can kill, cheat, and steal as much as they like. As long as they wave the homo flag, praise Jews/Israel, and yammer about Diversity, they are protected since Homomania, mass immigration, and Holocaust are the new religions of the Globe. Killed 500,000 kids in Iraq? Don’t worry. Just wave the ‘homo flag’ and that means you’re a ‘good person’, a ‘more evolved’ person. Destroyed Libya? Don’t worry. You’re for ‘gay marriage’. That means whatever you do is cool.

Hell yeah, that's what I was thinking when I first read this. Mr. Sniegosky brought up the writer when referencing a 1998 interview with George Keenan, an actual statesman involved in strategy decisions that needed to be made as the Cold War ramped up in the late 1940's. Then, the hack Friedman's name is in about every paragraph in this long article from thereon. Example:

As Putin began to exercise more and more power, Friedman’s views of NATO begin to change. In a 2014 column Friedman wrote that he had “opposed expanding NATO toward Russia after the Cold War . . . . It remains one of the dumbest things we’ve ever done and, of course, laid the groundwork for Putin’s rise.”

What difference does it make what some NY Times LP (Lyin Press) writer has to say about it? Quit listening to these people. They are not called the Lyin' Press for nothing!

I do agree with the author regarding his headline and most of the writing. I would like to write another comment - probably later - about this, but this Freidman thing should have been in the middle of the one coming.

One thing people (especially on the political right) tend to fail to understand about NATO is that at heart it is a big government bureaucratic structure, and just like all such structures it acquires an institutional life and will-to-existence of its own, because of all the very powerful and hugely well connected people who benefit from its existence. When its raison d’etre disappears, as NATO’s did with the end of the Soviet Union, they will do their utmost to find it a new one – compare with US policing bureaucracies transitioning from Prohibition anti-alcohol operations to anti-drugs and anti-gun activities, for instance.

These transitions distort policy because they involve systematic and well-funded lying about problems in order to create justification and political support for the continuance of the huge budgets and powers of the agency that is supposedly going to address them.

As for the change in NATO’s role from useful defensive alliance to trouble-enabling problem, this was explicitly recognised, when it first manifested itself most openly, by Kissinger:

“The rejection of long-range strategy explains how it was possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate consideration of its implications … The transformation of the NATO alliance from a defensive military grouping to an institution prepared to impose its values by force … undercut repeated American and allied assurances that Russia had nothing to fear from NATO expansion.“

Friedman stated that “[b]y expanding NATO at the end of the Cold War, when Russia was weak, we helped to cultivate a politics there that would one day be very receptive to Putin’s message that the West is ganging up on Russia. But, that said, the message is a lie. The West has no intention of bringing Ukraine into NATO. And please raise your hand if you think the European Union plans to invade Russia.”[17]

This is disingenuous nonsense on Friedman’s part. It was and is the clear intent of powerful US sphere figures to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO as soon as it becomes practicable. The US President stated as much in 2008, albeit at that time his goal had to be put on hold because wiser European heads fortunately prevailed (if only the same had occurred a couple of years earlier when he was planning the colossal blunder in Iraq). Here’s a reminder of the kind of rhetoric the Russians have had to put up with from Washington:

” Speaking in Kiev after a meeting with Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yushchenko, the US president said both post-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia should be allowed to join the alliance – despite vehement objections from Russia.

In remarks likely to infuriate the Kremlin, Bush said Ukraine should be invited during this week’s Nato summit in Bucharest to join Nato’s membership action programme, a prelude to full membership.

He also said that there could be no deal with Moscow over the US administration’s contentious plans to locate elements of its controversial missile defence system in eastern Europe.

“This is a misperception,” Bush said after talks with in Kiev. “I strongly believe that Ukraine and Georgia should be given MAP [Membership Action Plans], and there are no tradeoffs – period.””

Likewise, there is a clear intent to bring Ukraine into the EU as soon as practicable, and military alignment with NATO is part of the process of EU membership. Again, here’s the kind of rhetoric the Russians have had to put up with, this time from US Quisling David Cameron:

“David Cameron has said the EU should extend its membership deeper into the former Soviet Union, calling for its borders to run from the Atlantic to the Urals.

Speaking in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan on the day that former Yugoslav republic Croatia became the EU’s 28th member state, the prime minister hailed the power of the EU to transform divided societies.

……

The prime minister did not name any countries. But his remarks indicate that he believes that Ukraine, once known as the bread basket of the Soviet Union, should be admitted to the EU.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president – who has said that the demise of the USSR was one of the great strategic tragedies of the 20th century – may regard Cameron’s remarks as hostile. Putin believes that the EU should extend no further into the former USSR than the Baltic states.

Russia is sensitive about Ukrainian membership of the EU. Ukraine houses the Russian Black Sea naval fleet at Sevastopol, which was in Russia until the Crimean peninsula was gifted to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s.”

Good stuff, and the point about bipartisan support (and the reasons for that support from leftists) for NATO now making it particularly difficult to do what should have been done in the 1990s and terminate NATO is well made.

As you point out, Trump’s questioning of NATO was one of the very good things about his candidacy, and his subsequent backing away from that criticism is one of the disheartening things about his presidency.

Kennan warned that this expansion showed “little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”[13]

Kennan, of course, was absolutely correct about this, as subsequent events have demonstrated.

Here’s my favourite quote, from Solzhenitsyn in 2007, about the Russian popular reaction to US policy after the fall of the Soviet Union:

“When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda.

This mood started changing with the cruel NATO bombings of Serbia. It’s fair to say that all layers of Russian society were deeply and indelibly shocked by those bombings. The situation then became worse when NATO started to spread its influence and draw the ex-Soviet republics into its structure. This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc.

So, the perception of the West as mostly a “knight of democracy” has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.”

3. NATO nations have cooperated in a policy of containment, and aggression against Russia, Serbia, and Greece (yes Greece).

4. NATO functions as a profit making front for the Military Financial Complex.

5. NATO is the strong Right Arm of the world Zionist Oligarchs, in their ongoing efforts to control the peoples and the wealth of the Planet.

Casino Trump, and his controllers are no more critics of NATO, than was Killery Clinton and her controllers. The Truth of the difficulties that lovers of America – lovers of a Sovereign America sporting a proud Democratic Republic, led by a contentious courageous citizenry, are almost too stark to bear. [there must be some easy way out of this mess, someone/s who will come down from the sky and make everyone feel high - paraphrase of Marley]

But bear we will until we triumph. The alternative to continuing to struggle for our liberties, is one of continued decline into the abyss of humiliating totalitarian control, and growing financial and moral poverty.

I agree with the gist of your post, Durruti, but not about Trump. This guy is not one of the puppets. He would never have (tried, for now) to get as much done on protecting American sovereignty and he would never have been this vilified if he were.

His problem is that he really doesn't know that much yet about the political world He seems to go the right way MOST of the time when he does learn, but not all of the time.

The American people better start backing him up - going to the voting booth one time in 4 years does not cut it! If not, he can't get too far against the Left/Globalists/LP/Half-of-the-Red-Team/Judiciary He's one guy with a few loyal people around him.

Once-upon-a-time Friedman: “But, that said, the message is a lie. The West has no intention of bringing Ukraine into NATO.”

What duplicitous prevaricators the propagandist NYT deploys. The lies told depend on what that day requires they be, according to what can best manipulate gullible public opinion. “All The News That Fits.”

Oct 5, 2016 On the Frontlines of Ukraine’s Proxy War Between the West and Russia

The West has used everything from signals intelligence operations, espionage, fighter jet saber-rattling, and diplomatic standoffs to stem the rise of Russian influence around the world. These efforts are coming to a dangerous head in Ukraine — a classic Eastern Bloc proxy state — where the presence of NATO troops is driving tensions to Cold War-era levels.

June 28, 2016 US-NATO Prepares for War against Russia. Washington’s Objective: Create Divisions between Europe and Russia

The NATO has increased its presence in Eastern Europe 13 times for the latest years. In order to stop Russia’s revival, the US unwinds military conflicts plots at every possible way.

Who the hell cares about Thomas Friedman's 'views' on NATO, or on anything else for that matter? The guy is the quintessential journo-hack.

Hell yeah, that’s what I was thinking when I first read this. Mr. Sniegosky brought up the writer when referencing a 1998 interview with George Keenan, an actual statesman involved in strategy decisions that needed to be made as the Cold War ramped up in the late 1940′s. Then, the hack Friedman’s name is in about every paragraph in this long article from thereon. Example:

As Putin began to exercise more and more power, Friedman’s views of NATO begin to change. In a 2014 column Friedman wrote that he had “opposed expanding NATO toward Russia after the Cold War . . . . It remains one of the dumbest things we’ve ever done and, of course, laid the groundwork for Putin’s rise.”

What difference does it make what some NY Times LP (Lyin Press) writer has to say about it? Quit listening to these people. They are not called the Lyin’ Press for nothing!

I do agree with the author regarding his headline and most of the writing. I would like to write another comment – probably later – about this, but this Freidman thing should have been in the middle of the one coming.

3. NATO nations have cooperated in a policy of containment, and aggression against Russia, Serbia, and Greece (yes Greece).

4. NATO functions as a profit making front for the Military Financial Complex.

5. NATO is the strong Right Arm of the world Zionist Oligarchs, in their ongoing efforts to control the peoples and the wealth of the Planet.

Casino Trump, and his controllers are no more critics of NATO, than was Killery Clinton and her controllers. The Truth of the difficulties that lovers of America - lovers of a Sovereign America sporting a proud Democratic Republic, led by a contentious courageous citizenry, are almost too stark to bear. [there must be some easy way out of this mess, someone/s who will come down from the sky and make everyone feel high - paraphrase of Marley]

But bear we will until we triumph. The alternative to continuing to struggle for our liberties, is one of continued decline into the abyss of humiliating totalitarian control, and growing financial and moral poverty.

Where are our Sons and Daughters of Liberty?

Where are our Committees of Correspondence?

Where are our Minutemen?

The Republic is dead! Long Live the Republic!

Durruti

I agree with the gist of your post, Durruti, but not about Trump. This guy is not one of the puppets. He would never have (tried, for now) to get as much done on protecting American sovereignty and he would never have been this vilified if he were.

His problem is that he really doesn’t know that much yet about the political world He seems to go the right way MOST of the time when he does learn, but not all of the time.

The American people better start backing him up – going to the voting booth one time in 4 years does not cut it! If not, he can’t get too far against the Left/Globalists/LP/Half-of-the-Red-Team/Judiciary He’s one guy with a few loyal people around him.

My friends living in and born elsewhere of Latvian descent are all mesmerized by the legend of Chapter 5 of the NATO charter in that they believe their physical security is guaranteed by having joined the alliance. Media on both sides of the pond are equally ignorant or purposefully deceptive on this matter.

The ubiquity of the internet makes not actually reading the chapter among concerned individuals almost criminal. In plain English, if Russian tanks crashed over the border and occupied say, Latvia, all NATO is mandated to do is formulate a response in unison. This could be military or just a stiff diplomatic rebuke and nothing more. It is not hard to guess which one it would be in the Latvian example.

No matter how hard I hit concerned people over the head with a shit encrusted shillelagh on this point they all settle into a “God bless NATO” mantra.

It irritates me as much as the never ending misidentification of martial law with Marshall law. It’s like a stubborn mental block.

My friends living in and born elsewhere of Latvian descent are all mesmerized by the legend of Chapter 5 of the NATO charter in that they believe their physical security is guaranteed by having joined the alliance. Media on both sides of the pond are equally ignorant or purposefully deceptive on this matter.

You're probably talking about American Latvians. Many Balts in the old country don't necessarily believe Article 5 would work (or have been skeptical of it for a long time, interestingly the EU Lisbon treaty has a similar paragraph too, much more stronger worded). They're not all that naive. In fact, the Baltic nationalists support Intermarium. The participation in the war on terror should end too. After all, even Ukraine sent its soldiers to die in Iraq and what benefit did it bring to Ukraine?

Either way you don't know how NATO would react to an invasion of the Baltic states, the reaction very well may be military. It doesn't mean US soldiers would be used. NATO consists of many countries, not just USA, some of those countries do feel threatened by Russia.

Trump was right about NATO being obsolete. Soon the Neocoens will have us defend Georgia, a Zionist project, which is no where near the North Atlantic and definitely is of no vital American interest, which makes it a ideal place for the USA to lose blood and treasure for the glory of Zion! A pox on the Cabal!

Suppose we have a - well- misunderstanding- like now Trump says Russia will give back Crimea, and we will all get along fine. And the eastern Ukraine is tinder ready to go, - Putin and Russia had about enough of the Kiev coup/ Junta. The fuse can be lit. The dynamite is NATO. Things can happen before diplomacy has a chance to start. After the first shots, things take on a life of their own, and thats the end. We almost had a Russian war in Kosovo,
where our world class jackass General Westley Clark got into the Prestina airport hassle :" Jackson refused to enforce Clark's orders, reportedly telling him "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you."
The US has no genuine vital interests that should conflict with Russia, but Russia Does have vital interests in the Ukraine and Crimea and Serbia. - and NATO is the face of the Russian opposition. We must separate from this dynamite soon. Russia is not going to storm across the border into Sweden, Poland, or Germany and nobody thinks they will. All NATO does is to provide a trigger for a catastrophe to unfold before any re-evaluation of what is and is not in the vital US national interest.

Trump was right about NATO being obsolete. Soon the Neocoens will have us defend Georgia, a Zionist project, which is no where near the North Atlantic and definitely is of no vital American interest, which makes it a ideal place for the USA to lose blood and treasure for the glory of Zion! A pox on the Cabal!

Suppose we have a – well- misunderstanding- like now Trump says Russia will give back Crimea, and we will all get along fine. And the eastern Ukraine is tinder ready to go, – Putin and Russia had about enough of the Kiev coup/ Junta. The fuse can be lit. The dynamite is NATO. Things can happen before diplomacy has a chance to start. After the first shots, things take on a life of their own, and thats the end. We almost had a Russian war in Kosovo,
where our world class jackass General Westley Clark got into the Prestina airport hassle :” Jackson refused to enforce Clark’s orders, reportedly telling him “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you.”
The US has no genuine vital interests that should conflict with Russia, but Russia Does have vital interests in the Ukraine and Crimea and Serbia. – and NATO is the face of the Russian opposition. We must separate from this dynamite soon. Russia is not going to storm across the border into Sweden, Poland, or Germany and nobody thinks they will. All NATO does is to provide a trigger for a catastrophe to unfold before any re-evaluation of what is and is not in the vital US national interest.

"The US has no genuine vital interests that should conflict with Russia, but Russia Does have vital interests in the Ukraine and Crimea and Serbia." This is completely false. US investments for gas in Ukraine/Crimea are immense and were lost/jeopordized following the coup.

NATO is nothing more than the murderous muscle for the Jewish and Anglo zio-banksters who control the West from behind the scenes and have for over a hundred years, ever since they were given the keys/Fed to their devil’s kingdom.

both world wars were their handiwork, and they used the chaos ensuing from the destruction of Europe to create their criminal playground in Palestine, where- ever since they’ve used NATO to bully the world into accepting that abomination.

Today they’re off their meds, and are using NATO to destroy every nation that Israel considers inconvenient. They are beside themselves with giddy euphoria at the sight of white Christians slaughtering Muslim Arabs and Persians and getting slaughtered in the process. But what would really make them cum in their collective pants is to see another conflagration between white Christian butchering white Christian! like a full scale war between Russia and Eastern Europe / the West.

Today is the anniversary of the holocaust at Dresden, where they unleashed their id on European Christian women and children. It was pure Old Testament vengeance in the (burning) flesh. This is what they are all about, and NATO is their mindless golem. Going around crushing all their enemies (all of us)

It’s way past time to call NATO quits, and return sanity to the world.

We don’t need to be slaughtering each other. The sixty million people who died horrifically during and after WWII did not have to die. All of those deaths, and many more, are all a direct consequence of having the Fiend controlling our money supply, with the tragedy that the Fiend is a cruel and psychotic enemy of mankind.

The Fiend (and it’s thug NATO) need to be leashed and defanged. The West should trade with and be friends with all nations of the world, including our brothers in Russia.

When everyone realizes that it’s the Fiend vs. humanity, then we’ll finally be able to set things right. Until then, there’s going to be war and horrors and atrocities like nothing you can imagine in your simple goyim, cow-like mind.

today I think of the victims of Dresden and I feel a grim melancholy. While I know and understand that they look back on that event with buoyant and joyous delight at what was done.

Today (those planes from the Royal Air force and the USAF that dropped all those gasoline bombs and created that real holocaust) are the same planes that bomb Syria today and drone Yemen and threaten Russia. NATO is ((their)) mindless, blood-spattered goon. And God speed to Trump, and Le Pen and all the other people of sanity and good will in dismantling that monstrous cabal of war and death and evil.

Solzhenitsyn, somewhere in 200 yrs together, said that both Russia and the jewish bolshevists had to own up to their responsibilities, as had Germany with the Nuremberg trials, of which he spoke with deep admiration.

But while that miracle happens, nothing like celebrating what is good about german culture:

Suppose we have a - well- misunderstanding- like now Trump says Russia will give back Crimea, and we will all get along fine. And the eastern Ukraine is tinder ready to go, - Putin and Russia had about enough of the Kiev coup/ Junta. The fuse can be lit. The dynamite is NATO. Things can happen before diplomacy has a chance to start. After the first shots, things take on a life of their own, and thats the end. We almost had a Russian war in Kosovo,
where our world class jackass General Westley Clark got into the Prestina airport hassle :" Jackson refused to enforce Clark's orders, reportedly telling him "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you."
The US has no genuine vital interests that should conflict with Russia, but Russia Does have vital interests in the Ukraine and Crimea and Serbia. - and NATO is the face of the Russian opposition. We must separate from this dynamite soon. Russia is not going to storm across the border into Sweden, Poland, or Germany and nobody thinks they will. All NATO does is to provide a trigger for a catastrophe to unfold before any re-evaluation of what is and is not in the vital US national interest.

“The US has no genuine vital interests that should conflict with Russia, but Russia Does have vital interests in the Ukraine and Crimea and Serbia.” This is completely false. US investments for gas in Ukraine/Crimea are immense and were lost/jeopordized following the coup.

February 08, 2017 Neoliberalism and the New World Order. IMF-World Bank “Reforms”, The Role of Wall Street Wall Street behind Brazil Coup

Global financial warfare as outlined in professor Chossudovsky’s writings. Wall Street Behind Brazil Coup d Etat; The role played by the IMF and World Bank in the economies of debtor nations, The Real Plan in Brazil, The imposition of the Washington Consensus; Loss of national sovereignty, Neoliberal institution funding of grassroots movements; The main corporate actors of the New World Order; The function of propaganda and the process of global impoverishment and destruction of nation states.

NATO is nothing more than the murderous muscle for the Jewish and Anglo zio-banksters who control the West from behind the scenes and have for over a hundred years, ever since they were given the keys/Fed to their devil's kingdom.

both world wars were their handiwork, and they used the chaos ensuing from the destruction of Europe to create their criminal playground in Palestine, where- ever since they've used NATO to bully the world into accepting that abomination.

Today they're off their meds, and are using NATO to destroy every nation that Israel considers inconvenient. They are beside themselves with giddy euphoria at the sight of white Christians slaughtering Muslim Arabs and Persians and getting slaughtered in the process. But what would really make them cum in their collective pants is to see another conflagration between white Christian butchering white Christian! like a full scale war between Russia and Eastern Europe / the West.

Today is the anniversary of the holocaust at Dresden, where they unleashed their id on European Christian women and children. It was pure Old Testament vengeance in the (burning) flesh. This is what they are all about, and NATO is their mindless golem. Going around crushing all their enemies (all of us)

It's way past time to call NATO quits, and return sanity to the world.

We don't need to be slaughtering each other. The sixty million people who died horrifically during and after WWII did not have to die. All of those deaths, and many more, are all a direct consequence of having the Fiend controlling our money supply, with the tragedy that the Fiend is a cruel and psychotic enemy of mankind.

The Fiend (and it's thug NATO) need to be leashed and defanged. The West should trade with and be friends with all nations of the world, including our brothers in Russia.

When everyone realizes that it's the Fiend vs. humanity, then we'll finally be able to set things right. Until then, there's going to be war and horrors and atrocities like nothing you can imagine in your simple goyim, cow-like mind.

today I think of the victims of Dresden and I feel a grim melancholy. While I know and understand that they look back on that event with buoyant and joyous delight at what was done.

Today (those planes from the Royal Air force and the USAF that dropped all those gasoline bombs and created that real holocaust) are the same planes that bomb Syria today and drone Yemen and threaten Russia. NATO is ((their)) mindless, blood-spattered goon. And God speed to Trump, and Le Pen and all the other people of sanity and good will in dismantling that monstrous cabal of war and death and evil.

” Today, Russia is much weaker militarily, especially in its conventional forces, and with an ideology with little global appeal. ”
You betray your military ignorance in that statement. In the past 15 years, Russia has rapidly modernised it forces and weapons. The aim is different to the Soviet Era – to protect Russia and its interests in her near abroad, not promote World Revolution. Its most modern aircraft and tanks are undoubtedly superior to the Americans.
During that time, the Americans spent trillions on Middle East wars and modernised very little. Indeed, US arms manufacturers have a strong vested interest in weapons systems which maximise profit rather than maximise security. So obsolescent weapons like aircraft carriers and AWACS- dependent aircraft continue to be built.
Over 15 years later, US forces continue to be in Iraq and Afghanistan. They continue to be very dangerous places. They have stretched US forces’ reserves and deeply damaged morale. US forces, like the IDF, has become very casualty averse.
By contrast, Putin quelled Chechnya quickly. If there is war, Russian forces will be fighting in their own backyard. Morale will be good.
You claim Russia’s ideology has little global appeal. Many millions of Europeans and North American would disagree. By contrast, the Homo-Liberalism espoused by the Liberal Establishment has literally diminishing appeal as it exponents die off one by one.

” Today, Russia is much weaker militarily, especially in its conventional forces, and with an ideology with little global appeal. ”
You betray your military ignorance in that statement. In the past 15 years, Russia has rapidly modernised it forces and weapons. The aim is different to the Soviet Era – to protect Russia and its interests in her near abroad, not promote World Revolution........You claim Russia’s ideology has little global appeal.

No, his statement is absolutely correct, on both counts.

The Soviet Union was a superpower in a world dominated by two superpowers, whereas Russia is just an ordinary power in a world dominated by one hyperpower (though a case can be made that this will change if China's rise continues). There is simply no comparison between the relative military (and economic) power wielded by Russia today and that wielded by the Soviet Union at its peak.

For sure Russia has made great progress in recovering militarily from the catastrophe for its military strength of the Soviet decline and collapse, and Russia fields strong, competent and modern military forces. But it's nothing compared to the Soviet Union, that controlled half of Europe, wielded a military that arguably could have occupied the rest were it not for the nuclear deterrent, and was involved in supporting ideologically allied revolutionary movements throughout the world.

To ignore reality by grossly overstating Russian strength or understating US strength is just as bad as ignoring it to glorify US strength and underrate Russian strengths.

As for ideology, it's critical to understanding modern international affairs to recognise that it is the US that now labours under and exploits a destabilising universalist political ideology (liberal democratism, combining social liberalism with globalist internationalism) to justify and enable interference in other countries' affairs (vide "democracy promotion", "human rights", and "colour revolutions"). This is as dangerous a doctrine in its own way as was Soviet communism, and certainly as useful in generating subversives in target countries.

Russia on the other hand has no such ideological menace guiding its actions - its actions are largely pragmatic and cautious. Its general conservative traditionalism, relatively healthy attitudes towards sexual perversion, and mild nationalism (aka patriotism) might be appealing to those in US sphere countries who recognise in it what their own societies have lost, but it isn't something you can invade another country to impose upon them.

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say EX-CRITIC of NATO as only in the last few days Donald Trump has felt compelled to continue on with Obama’s policy of sending even more forces next to Russia’s border. Add to that EX-friend of Russia!!

NATO is nothing more than the murderous muscle for the Jewish and Anglo zio-banksters who control the West from behind the scenes and have for over a hundred years, ever since they were given the keys/Fed to their devil's kingdom.

both world wars were their handiwork, and they used the chaos ensuing from the destruction of Europe to create their criminal playground in Palestine, where- ever since they've used NATO to bully the world into accepting that abomination.

Today they're off their meds, and are using NATO to destroy every nation that Israel considers inconvenient. They are beside themselves with giddy euphoria at the sight of white Christians slaughtering Muslim Arabs and Persians and getting slaughtered in the process. But what would really make them cum in their collective pants is to see another conflagration between white Christian butchering white Christian! like a full scale war between Russia and Eastern Europe / the West.

Today is the anniversary of the holocaust at Dresden, where they unleashed their id on European Christian women and children. It was pure Old Testament vengeance in the (burning) flesh. This is what they are all about, and NATO is their mindless golem. Going around crushing all their enemies (all of us)

It's way past time to call NATO quits, and return sanity to the world.

We don't need to be slaughtering each other. The sixty million people who died horrifically during and after WWII did not have to die. All of those deaths, and many more, are all a direct consequence of having the Fiend controlling our money supply, with the tragedy that the Fiend is a cruel and psychotic enemy of mankind.

The Fiend (and it's thug NATO) need to be leashed and defanged. The West should trade with and be friends with all nations of the world, including our brothers in Russia.

When everyone realizes that it's the Fiend vs. humanity, then we'll finally be able to set things right. Until then, there's going to be war and horrors and atrocities like nothing you can imagine in your simple goyim, cow-like mind.

today I think of the victims of Dresden and I feel a grim melancholy. While I know and understand that they look back on that event with buoyant and joyous delight at what was done.

Today (those planes from the Royal Air force and the USAF that dropped all those gasoline bombs and created that real holocaust) are the same planes that bomb Syria today and drone Yemen and threaten Russia. NATO is ((their)) mindless, blood-spattered goon. And God speed to Trump, and Le Pen and all the other people of sanity and good will in dismantling that monstrous cabal of war and death and evil.

We don’t need to be slaughtering each other. The sixty million people who died horrifically during and after WWII did not have to die.

We don’t need to be slaughtering each other. The sixty million people who died horrifically during and after WWII did not have to die.

The concept applies to WW1 as well. Both were absolutely unnecessary

and it will apply to the next one as well, and now we can all see just how preventable all these wars really are. And how they're always foisted upon us by a tiny handful of cowards and liars, who use their ill-gotten lucre to corrupt the governments and install scum like John McCain to do their dirty work for them.

If there is a war with Iran or Russia, it will be based on lies to benefit Zionists, just like the World Wars were based on lies to benefit the Zionists.

"The US has no genuine vital interests that should conflict with Russia, but Russia Does have vital interests in the Ukraine and Crimea and Serbia." This is completely false. US investments for gas in Ukraine/Crimea are immense and were lost/jeopordized following the coup.

US investments for gas in Ukraine/Crimea are immense …

That a handful of the moneybag clique had investments there in no way makes it a genuinely vital interest of the US despite the numerous precedents that’ve been set.

That a handful of the moneybag clique had investments there in no way makes it a genuinely vital interest of the U

Jacques, You made this nice and simple in explanation which seems to show reasons for the vehemence in the pissed offedness about Crimea. Which historically was part of Russia for a long time, and was the warm water port etc.

So, the reason if I may, is that Russia/Putin's nationalistic resurgence after the Yeltsin open yard sale on Russian/Soviet assets, when western connected oligarchs, and western principals... invested too quick, and now they're really mad that the door closed up on them. Is that it?

" Today, Russia is much weaker militarily, especially in its conventional forces, and with an ideology with little global appeal. "You betray your military ignorance in that statement. In the past 15 years, Russia has rapidly modernised it forces and weapons. The aim is different to the Soviet Era - to protect Russia and its interests in her near abroad, not promote World Revolution. Its most modern aircraft and tanks are undoubtedly superior to the Americans.During that time, the Americans spent trillions on Middle East wars and modernised very little. Indeed, US arms manufacturers have a strong vested interest in weapons systems which maximise profit rather than maximise security. So obsolescent weapons like aircraft carriers and AWACS- dependent aircraft continue to be built.Over 15 years later, US forces continue to be in Iraq and Afghanistan. They continue to be very dangerous places. They have stretched US forces' reserves and deeply damaged morale. US forces, like the IDF, has become very casualty averse.By contrast, Putin quelled Chechnya quickly. If there is war, Russian forces will be fighting in their own backyard. Morale will be good.You claim Russia's ideology has little global appeal. Many millions of Europeans and North American would disagree. By contrast, the Homo-Liberalism espoused by the Liberal Establishment has literally diminishing appeal as it exponents die off one by one.

” Today, Russia is much weaker militarily, especially in its conventional forces, and with an ideology with little global appeal. ”
You betray your military ignorance in that statement. In the past 15 years, Russia has rapidly modernised it forces and weapons. The aim is different to the Soviet Era – to protect Russia and its interests in her near abroad, not promote World Revolution……..You claim Russia’s ideology has little global appeal.

No, his statement is absolutely correct, on both counts.

The Soviet Union was a superpower in a world dominated by two superpowers, whereas Russia is just an ordinary power in a world dominated by one hyperpower (though a case can be made that this will change if China’s rise continues). There is simply no comparison between the relative military (and economic) power wielded by Russia today and that wielded by the Soviet Union at its peak.

For sure Russia has made great progress in recovering militarily from the catastrophe for its military strength of the Soviet decline and collapse, and Russia fields strong, competent and modern military forces. But it’s nothing compared to the Soviet Union, that controlled half of Europe, wielded a military that arguably could have occupied the rest were it not for the nuclear deterrent, and was involved in supporting ideologically allied revolutionary movements throughout the world.

To ignore reality by grossly overstating Russian strength or understating US strength is just as bad as ignoring it to glorify US strength and underrate Russian strengths.

As for ideology, it’s critical to understanding modern international affairs to recognise that it is the US that now labours under and exploits a destabilising universalist political ideology (liberal democratism, combining social liberalism with globalist internationalism) to justify and enable interference in other countries’ affairs (vide “democracy promotion”, “human rights”, and “colour revolutions”). This is as dangerous a doctrine in its own way as was Soviet communism, and certainly as useful in generating subversives in target countries.

Russia on the other hand has no such ideological menace guiding its actions – its actions are largely pragmatic and cautious. Its general conservative traditionalism, relatively healthy attitudes towards sexual perversion, and mild nationalism (aka patriotism) might be appealing to those in US sphere countries who recognise in it what their own societies have lost, but it isn’t something you can invade another country to impose upon them.

The Hyperpower, the US, as you call it, is now averaging a $1 trillion per year Trade Deficit. Since Clinton became President, the Trade Deficit has reached $10 trillion. Dimwit Obama just added $8 trillion to the Federal Deficit, now $19.5 trillion. The end is very near and the Liberal Establishment are going to blame Trump.The Hyperpower, 15 years later, doesn't have the power or manpower to defeat bongo bongo land countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. If a Hyperpower can't beat bongo bongo land countries, then its not a Hyperpower at all.If you can't grasp this, you truly are an idiot.

My friends living in and born elsewhere of Latvian descent are all mesmerized by the legend of Chapter 5 of the NATO charter in that they believe their physical security is guaranteed by having joined the alliance. Media on both sides of the pond are equally ignorant or purposefully deceptive on this matter.

The ubiquity of the internet makes not actually reading the chapter among concerned individuals almost criminal. In plain English, if Russian tanks crashed over the border and occupied say, Latvia, all NATO is mandated to do is formulate a response in unison. This could be military or just a stiff diplomatic rebuke and nothing more. It is not hard to guess which one it would be in the Latvian example.

No matter how hard I hit concerned people over the head with a shit encrusted shillelagh on this point they all settle into a "God bless NATO" mantra.

It irritates me as much as the never ending misidentification of martial law with Marshall law. It's like a stubborn mental block.

Cheers-

My friends living in and born elsewhere of Latvian descent are all mesmerized by the legend of Chapter 5 of the NATO charter in that they believe their physical security is guaranteed by having joined the alliance. Media on both sides of the pond are equally ignorant or purposefully deceptive on this matter.

You’re probably talking about American Latvians. Many Balts in the old country don’t necessarily believe Article 5 would work (or have been skeptical of it for a long time, interestingly the EU Lisbon treaty has a similar paragraph too, much more stronger worded). They’re not all that naive. In fact, the Baltic nationalists support Intermarium. The participation in the war on terror should end too. After all, even Ukraine sent its soldiers to die in Iraq and what benefit did it bring to Ukraine?

Either way you don’t know how NATO would react to an invasion of the Baltic states, the reaction very well may be military. It doesn’t mean US soldiers would be used. NATO consists of many countries, not just USA, some of those countries do feel threatened by Russia.

We don’t know what Trump’s true intentions were concerning NATO. He criticized it, sure, and it could’ve been one of his negotiation tactics, but he also talked a lot about how NATO should be used to fight terror. There is just not enough information in his quotes to detect his real opinion of it (assuming it was a stable opinion). Europeans would be wise not to trust this administration.

Why doesn’t the US just leave NATO? And let Europeans build their own defense. They have enough money and weapons industries.

In that case, though, Europeans can no longer go to war in the ME. The US can have bilateral agreements with, let’s say, Spain, if they want to use Spain’s infrastructure for war on terror.

Also, the US should drastically downsize its diplomatic corps. If you look at the gigantic building of the US Embassy for example in Oslo, Norway, you’d realize it is way too big and the staff too numerous.

That a handful of the moneybag clique had investments there in no way makes it a genuinely vital interest of the US despite the numerous precedents that've been set.

[''US investments for gas in Ukraine/Crimea are immense …'']

That a handful of the moneybag clique had investments there in no way makes it a genuinely vital interest of the U

Jacques, You made this nice and simple in explanation which seems to show reasons for the vehemence in the pissed offedness about Crimea. Which historically was part of Russia for a long time, and was the warm water port etc.

So, the reason if I may, is that Russia/Putin’s nationalistic resurgence after the Yeltsin open yard sale on Russian/Soviet assets, when western connected oligarchs, and western principals… invested too quick, and now they’re really mad that the door closed up on them. Is that it?

I think you are correct as regarding the more proximate reasons, but the bigger reasons are no doubt related to the idea that the usual suspects want to control everything while blaming others for wanting the same thing.

No doubt the scum are encircling and attempting to isolate Russia in a manner very similar to what they did do ascendant Germany last century. The bastards never give up. Never satisfied with enough.

NATO is nothing more than the murderous muscle for the Jewish and Anglo zio-banksters who control the West from behind the scenes and have for over a hundred years, ever since they were given the keys/Fed to their devil's kingdom.

both world wars were their handiwork, and they used the chaos ensuing from the destruction of Europe to create their criminal playground in Palestine, where- ever since they've used NATO to bully the world into accepting that abomination.

Today they're off their meds, and are using NATO to destroy every nation that Israel considers inconvenient. They are beside themselves with giddy euphoria at the sight of white Christians slaughtering Muslim Arabs and Persians and getting slaughtered in the process. But what would really make them cum in their collective pants is to see another conflagration between white Christian butchering white Christian! like a full scale war between Russia and Eastern Europe / the West.

Today is the anniversary of the holocaust at Dresden, where they unleashed their id on European Christian women and children. It was pure Old Testament vengeance in the (burning) flesh. This is what they are all about, and NATO is their mindless golem. Going around crushing all their enemies (all of us)

It's way past time to call NATO quits, and return sanity to the world.

We don't need to be slaughtering each other. The sixty million people who died horrifically during and after WWII did not have to die. All of those deaths, and many more, are all a direct consequence of having the Fiend controlling our money supply, with the tragedy that the Fiend is a cruel and psychotic enemy of mankind.

The Fiend (and it's thug NATO) need to be leashed and defanged. The West should trade with and be friends with all nations of the world, including our brothers in Russia.

When everyone realizes that it's the Fiend vs. humanity, then we'll finally be able to set things right. Until then, there's going to be war and horrors and atrocities like nothing you can imagine in your simple goyim, cow-like mind.

today I think of the victims of Dresden and I feel a grim melancholy. While I know and understand that they look back on that event with buoyant and joyous delight at what was done.

Today (those planes from the Royal Air force and the USAF that dropped all those gasoline bombs and created that real holocaust) are the same planes that bomb Syria today and drone Yemen and threaten Russia. NATO is ((their)) mindless, blood-spattered goon. And God speed to Trump, and Le Pen and all the other people of sanity and good will in dismantling that monstrous cabal of war and death and evil.

Solzhenitsyn, somewhere in 200 yrs together, said that both Russia and the jewish bolshevists had to own up to their responsibilities, as had Germany with the Nuremberg trials, of which he spoke with deep admiration.

But while that miracle happens, nothing like celebrating what is good about german culture:

Solzhenitsyn, somewhere in 200 yrs together, said that both Russia and the jewish bolshevists had to own up to their responsibilities

he's a hero of mine Veritatis, and he was right.

to blame Germany and Germans for the crimes of the Nazis, while ignoring the even more egregious crimes of the (often Jewish) Soviets, leaves creation and the human experience in a constant and perpetual state of iniquity

And it is that grinding iniquity that is driving the world to yet another monstrous global conflict between Russia and Eastern Europe.

vanity seems to be the ultimate human folly, and Russians today would drag the world to nuclear war - rather than admit that under the thrall of the Soviet Fiend, their ancestors too acted like beasts and savages.

A full accounting (without rancor or insult) would go a long way towards healing the world, and disarming the Fiend of his devil's tricks to foment his eternal and Satanic wars

(thanks for the links Veritatis. I've been to that church in Dresden. The Church of Our Lady [Frauenkirche]. Part of the story is that the London-based man who constructed the new dome for the church was the son of a man who participated in the bombing, thereby symbolically demonstrating a healing of sorts. The world could use more of that kind of thing, I'd reckon)

” Today, Russia is much weaker militarily, especially in its conventional forces, and with an ideology with little global appeal. ”
You betray your military ignorance in that statement. In the past 15 years, Russia has rapidly modernised it forces and weapons. The aim is different to the Soviet Era – to protect Russia and its interests in her near abroad, not promote World Revolution........You claim Russia’s ideology has little global appeal.

No, his statement is absolutely correct, on both counts.

The Soviet Union was a superpower in a world dominated by two superpowers, whereas Russia is just an ordinary power in a world dominated by one hyperpower (though a case can be made that this will change if China's rise continues). There is simply no comparison between the relative military (and economic) power wielded by Russia today and that wielded by the Soviet Union at its peak.

For sure Russia has made great progress in recovering militarily from the catastrophe for its military strength of the Soviet decline and collapse, and Russia fields strong, competent and modern military forces. But it's nothing compared to the Soviet Union, that controlled half of Europe, wielded a military that arguably could have occupied the rest were it not for the nuclear deterrent, and was involved in supporting ideologically allied revolutionary movements throughout the world.

To ignore reality by grossly overstating Russian strength or understating US strength is just as bad as ignoring it to glorify US strength and underrate Russian strengths.

As for ideology, it's critical to understanding modern international affairs to recognise that it is the US that now labours under and exploits a destabilising universalist political ideology (liberal democratism, combining social liberalism with globalist internationalism) to justify and enable interference in other countries' affairs (vide "democracy promotion", "human rights", and "colour revolutions"). This is as dangerous a doctrine in its own way as was Soviet communism, and certainly as useful in generating subversives in target countries.

Russia on the other hand has no such ideological menace guiding its actions - its actions are largely pragmatic and cautious. Its general conservative traditionalism, relatively healthy attitudes towards sexual perversion, and mild nationalism (aka patriotism) might be appealing to those in US sphere countries who recognise in it what their own societies have lost, but it isn't something you can invade another country to impose upon them.

The Hyperpower, the US, as you call it, is now averaging a $1 trillion per year Trade Deficit. Since Clinton became President, the Trade Deficit has reached $10 trillion. Dimwit Obama just added $8 trillion to the Federal Deficit, now $19.5 trillion.
The end is very near and the Liberal Establishment are going to blame Trump.
The Hyperpower, 15 years later, doesn’t have the power or manpower to defeat bongo bongo land countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. If a Hyperpower can’t beat bongo bongo land countries, then its not a Hyperpower at all.
If you can’t grasp this, you truly are an idiot.

And yet - Trump wants to increase the US military spending AND for NATO members to increase theirs. The result will be a huge military spending increase by Western countries which will be lame for Russia.

Contrary to your assertion, the US militarily defeated both Iraq and Afghanistan, and for militarily trivial losses. The proof of that was staring you in the face all along, in the fact that US military forces occupied the entirety of both countries and had complete freedom of movement within them, and controlled the establishment of new governments in both capitals. There was another clue in the fact that the Iraq military actually surrendered en masse. Subsequent failure to prevent rebellions from getting established is a political and internal security defeat, not military.

As for the talk about the deficit, well it hasn't prevented the US spending trillions on wars of choice in the past decade and a half, so it's difficult to take your implication that it impacts on US power all that seriously. Perhaps it will, perhaps it won't, depending on the circumstances. It's a matter of opinion, in an area where opinions are dramatically varied and usually self-serving.

None of this in any case is relevant to the original point at issue, which is that the Soviet Union, relatively speaking, was massively more powerful both militarily and politically, than modern Russia, just as the above the line writer stated. Suggesting the contrary requires a profound ignorance of mid-C20th affairs.

Since Clinton became President, the Trade Deficit has reached $10 trillion. Dimwit Obama just added $8 trillion to the Federal Deficit, now $19.5 trillion.

I believe there's a theory, quite popular in some circles, according to which the deficits and debts don't matter as long as they are denominated in your national currency, the currency you control. These deficits and debts are just some amounts of dollars, supported by what - trust in god?

To what extent this is a reasonable theory, that of course is a controversial matter...

The Hyperpower, the US, as you call it, is now averaging a $1 trillion per year Trade Deficit. Since Clinton became President, the Trade Deficit has reached $10 trillion. Dimwit Obama just added $8 trillion to the Federal Deficit, now $19.5 trillion. The end is very near and the Liberal Establishment are going to blame Trump.The Hyperpower, 15 years later, doesn't have the power or manpower to defeat bongo bongo land countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. If a Hyperpower can't beat bongo bongo land countries, then its not a Hyperpower at all.If you can't grasp this, you truly are an idiot.

And yet – Trump wants to increase the US military spending AND for NATO members to increase theirs. The result will be a huge military spending increase by Western countries which will be lame for Russia.

As I mentioned previously, any increased spending will maximise arms manufacturers' profits without any benefit for security. I don't believe Trump is serious about this.
Even if he is, this will merely precipitate American Economic Collapse.
The sooner the better, the quicker American Hegemonism ends and its ugly twins, Neoconservatism and Neoliberalism, the better for the rest of us.

And yet - Trump wants to increase the US military spending AND for NATO members to increase theirs. The result will be a huge military spending increase by Western countries which will be lame for Russia.

As I mentioned previously, any increased spending will maximise arms manufacturers’ profits without any benefit for security. I don’t believe Trump is serious about this.
Even if he is, this will merely precipitate American Economic Collapse.
The sooner the better, the quicker American Hegemonism ends and its ugly twins, Neoconservatism and Neoliberalism, the better for the rest of us.

NATO is all about American control and geopolitical dominance over Europe. Washington’s political elite likes being in charge. It also makes a great market for America’s huge arms industry. Finally Jews in the USA like it because it is a way to keep America invested in the Europe-Mediterranean-middle east area, underwriting Israeli security. Finally all those bureaucrats who work for it want to keep their cozy high-paying jobs.

It has nothing to do with protecting ordinary Europeans. Probably makes them less safe by creating needless tensions with Russia.

That a handful of the moneybag clique had investments there in no way makes it a genuinely vital interest of the U

Jacques, You made this nice and simple in explanation which seems to show reasons for the vehemence in the pissed offedness about Crimea. Which historically was part of Russia for a long time, and was the warm water port etc.

So, the reason if I may, is that Russia/Putin's nationalistic resurgence after the Yeltsin open yard sale on Russian/Soviet assets, when western connected oligarchs, and western principals... invested too quick, and now they're really mad that the door closed up on them. Is that it?

I think you are correct as regarding the more proximate reasons, but the bigger reasons are no doubt related to the idea that the usual suspects want to control everything while blaming others for wanting the same thing.

No doubt the scum are encircling and attempting to isolate Russia in a manner very similar to what they did do ascendant Germany last century. The bastards never give up. Never satisfied with enough.

In the 1980s, when the international Communist threat still seemed real to many, it was possible to discuss whether or not NATO served a purpose or should be discontinued even in a prestigious publication such as Foreign Affairs. See for example Earl Ravenal’s “Europe Without America: The Erosion of NATO” in the Summer 1985 issue. What can possibly have happened that makes the question so outré in the meantime?

"The US has no genuine vital interests that should conflict with Russia, but Russia Does have vital interests in the Ukraine and Crimea and Serbia." This is completely false. US investments for gas in Ukraine/Crimea are immense and were lost/jeopordized following the coup.

Private commercial interests in Ukraine and Crimea are NOT vital US interests. This is the mercantile mindset. – You may have put your finger on the essence of the thing.

there is now a tendency on the part of American liberals to be far more critical of Putin than they were of Soviet Communism. Liberals during the Cold War saw the Soviet planned economic system as being beneficial in some ways. In contrast, liberals find nothing positive in Putin’s system.

This is precisely why we should find something positive in Putin’s system. There are probably more committed Marxists on the faculty of any Ivy League university than there are in Putin’s government. The enemy during the Cold War was never the historical Russia, but rather the Soviet system – what we used unembarrasedly to describe as “godless Communism.” Russia today is neither godless nor Communist. This ought to commend it to us.

Putin is an authoritarian, but seems rather less dreadful than the authoritarian rulers of other states with which this country is on far better terms than are warranted. Consider Saudi Arabia, whose crown prince the U.S. just presented a medal. Saudi Arabia has long been the principal source of funding for Islamic terrorism. It is a country where there is not even a pretense of democracy, where women are not permitted to drive automobiles, and where people are still occasionally beheaded for witchcraft. Then there’s the People’s Republic of China, which remains a one-party state ruled by its Communist Party. It has been engaged in economic warfare with the United States for the past twenty years, and makes none-too-subtle military threats against neighboring countries. It reportedly caters to medical tourism by scheduling executions of Falun Gong followers and other dissidents to provide fresh organs for transplantation as needed.

American foreign policy is stuck in the 1970s. Our approach toward the problems of the Middle East is still conditioned by a fear of another Arab oil embargo, like the one that happened in 1973-4. Yet the U.S. is much less vulnerable today to such an episode than it was forty years ago. Fracking, horizontal drilling, and the discovery of new reserves have made it the world’s largest oil producer, outstripping the Saudis. Why should we continue to kowtow to Middle Eastern dictators, absolute monarchs, and Islamic theocrats? They need foreign exchange to supply the basic needs of their people, and must sell their oil to the rest of the world to get it. Now they have competition, and can’t extort from their customers as they once did. American foreign policy should put them on notice of this.

Likewise, the U.S. relationship with the PRC is still founded in the thinking that induced Nixon to make his opening to that country – to exploit its geopolitical and ideological rivalry with the then Soviet Union. But as Trump has so often pointed out, China has taken terrible advantage of the U.S. In the mean time, the Soviet Union has collapsed.

As Lord Palmerston observed, alliances are transitory, but national interests are eternal. More amicable relations with Russia could be useful to American national interests in dealing both with the Middle East and with China. Are the minions of the American deep state so blind that they cannot see this? Or have they been suborned by the governments of these countries as the Clintons were? Perhaps their readiness to attribute the Trump administration’s apparent desire for rapprochement with Russia to some sort of crooked scheming reflects their own ways of doing international business.

In fact the United States gets very, very little of its oil from the middle east or Persian gulf regions. It is a complete and utter myth that the USA is in any way dependent upon Arab countries for its energy needs. This canard is kept alive by those who want the US involved in that area of the world.

The Hyperpower, the US, as you call it, is now averaging a $1 trillion per year Trade Deficit. Since Clinton became President, the Trade Deficit has reached $10 trillion. Dimwit Obama just added $8 trillion to the Federal Deficit, now $19.5 trillion. The end is very near and the Liberal Establishment are going to blame Trump.The Hyperpower, 15 years later, doesn't have the power or manpower to defeat bongo bongo land countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. If a Hyperpower can't beat bongo bongo land countries, then its not a Hyperpower at all.If you can't grasp this, you truly are an idiot.

Contrary to your assertion, the US militarily defeated both Iraq and Afghanistan, and for militarily trivial losses. The proof of that was staring you in the face all along, in the fact that US military forces occupied the entirety of both countries and had complete freedom of movement within them, and controlled the establishment of new governments in both capitals. There was another clue in the fact that the Iraq military actually surrendered en masse. Subsequent failure to prevent rebellions from getting established is a political and internal security defeat, not military.

As for the talk about the deficit, well it hasn’t prevented the US spending trillions on wars of choice in the past decade and a half, so it’s difficult to take your implication that it impacts on US power all that seriously. Perhaps it will, perhaps it won’t, depending on the circumstances. It’s a matter of opinion, in an area where opinions are dramatically varied and usually self-serving.

None of this in any case is relevant to the original point at issue, which is that the Soviet Union, relatively speaking, was massively more powerful both militarily and politically, than modern Russia, just as the above the line writer stated. Suggesting the contrary requires a profound ignorance of mid-C20th affairs.

I didn’t imply ALL and never do. However. the media on both sides of the pond perpetuate the Nato= national security myth so that means that most of the lazy readers, soft minded patriots and disinterested snowflakes subscribe to the general delusion that they are smug as bugs on paper anyhow.

If you think, even for a nanosecond that Trump and whichever generals he still has standing will trigger WW3 over a tactically and geographically irrelevant nation of 2 million, of whom roughly a third are Russian, directly on the border with the aggressor with scarcely more than a thousand whore mongering ‘boots on the ground’ then your koolaid is mixed with some pretty potent samogon. Watch that you don’t go totally blind.

To bolster your argument with the silly suggestion that possibly Polish, Lithuanian and Portuguese troops would undertake the physical burden of dislodging the aggressor by conventional means (they have no nukes) makes me suspect that you are an inveterate ‘gamer’
who should shut down his laptop and stick his/her head out the window once in a while.

I initially suspected that you might be a native Latvian but was dissuaded by that notion in that most native Latvians know that Russia already de facto controls Latvia. Invading has more downside than upside (diplomatically). Why break in and steal your own car when you have the keys and an ownership slip?

A fun exercise in theory would be if Trump and/or any of the top generals were asked to find Latvia on a globe where the country names are removed. Actually the same challenge could be issued to find Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Italy and Canada. It would be like a flashback where Jay Leno walked around and asked random people common knowledge questions. I could never watch those segments. It was like taunting children with Down’s Syndrome.

They must have given you really old pīrāgi pastries at the summer camp of the Catskills or whichever wooden Lutheran church near Toronto you attended as a kid. I can't otherwise explain how you ended up so self hating. Another proof that cosmopolitanism sucks.

I see that the shadow of 1944 still weighs heavily over you. That's sad. And you see many things through the lense of an exile Balt. The first delusion being that Russia is interested in waging a conventional attack on the Baltics in some kind of an isolated type of scenario. Such an attack would most likely only happen within a larger conflict and in that case, while, yes, the Baltics would be overrun quickly, the problem would no longer be ours, but Russians' since it would be a huge pain in the ass to establish any sort of a functioning government over utterly hostile populations in the era of digital openness; it would be the problem of Scandinavians who would most likely lose a large chunk of their retirement savings due to the overexposure in the Baltic banking sector, Germans who would have to now meet Russians on the Rhein once again, and Americans, not only whose assets in Europe would be under threat (let's assume they haven't yet picked up their assets from Germany, etc) but whose territory and populations would be threatened because if I'm not mistaken Russia's missiles can reach the US.

When it comes to hybrid warfare, we have our own armies and Security police which would tackle that issue. If you are under any false assumption that Latvian Russians will start some silly rebellion ala Donetsk, rest assured - they won't, as they are absolutely NOT interested in "burning their own homes" (an actual quote from a Latvian Russian from last year in response to one of those many Anglo derived articles about how a WW3 will begin in Latvia through a "Russian rebellion"), so it would be a real pain in the ass for Russia to organize anything of that sort (surely, Russia is capable of doing it but it would be no easy task - an again, this is something that can be tackled by our interior forces).

Hybrid war and cyber war are still new concepts, but with some training and with innovative approaches the Balts could handle it.

As to your claim that Russia somehow controls the Baltic states, I don't now what exactly you mean, if you mean they have geostrategic / military advantage (they have that over Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, probably over Japan and Turkey as well), sure, and there is also energy dependency (as it is in all of Europe - although steps are being taken to decouple), but that's it - other than that Russia has no control either over our parliaments, foreign policies or trade.

I don't mind decoupling from the US, since 2016 I am no longer a huge fan of that relationship, however, as I said, that would also mean that the US would have to decrease its diplomatic "outreach" in the region (there is a lot that falls under that). Also, in that case not a single Baltic soldier should participate in the "war on terror" and the US can no longer interfere in our relationships with countries such as Iran (and the Baltics should never support any insane Trump ideas about striking Iran!), or our budding commercial relationship with China.

There are alternatives to the US / Russia, the world is no longer the way it was in 1945 or even 1991.

For years, I've been a huge fan of increasing military spending and Balts, Nords and potentially some other Germanics will soon increase their military budgets.

And finally, you can't speak of any conventional Russian invasion without considering where the real geopolitical battle is taking place right now - Ukraine. Just remember that there are now 40 million Ukrainians who dislike Russia (very unfortunate, btw), and the Russian troops are nowhere near Kiev (bad as the situation might be for Ukraine). That is a huge buffer for Poland and the Baltics. The recent speech by president Lukashenka ("Volodya, don't ruin my evening") was a real eye opener, too. And by the way, Belarus just bought some gas from Iran (which it may transport through one of the Latvian ports). I give high five to president Lukashenka! Our potential ally in the future Intermarium alliance.

"I have little doubt the fool just got his marching orders from the ‘yahu. Heaven help us!"
Yeah I hate to admit it but seeing 'yahoo' absolutely giddy in meeting with Trump you're right!
Hopefully Trump is using this as a ruse to follow 'America first' policies but I have my doubts.

The Hyperpower, the US, as you call it, is now averaging a $1 trillion per year Trade Deficit. Since Clinton became President, the Trade Deficit has reached $10 trillion. Dimwit Obama just added $8 trillion to the Federal Deficit, now $19.5 trillion. The end is very near and the Liberal Establishment are going to blame Trump.The Hyperpower, 15 years later, doesn't have the power or manpower to defeat bongo bongo land countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. If a Hyperpower can't beat bongo bongo land countries, then its not a Hyperpower at all.If you can't grasp this, you truly are an idiot.

Since Clinton became President, the Trade Deficit has reached $10 trillion. Dimwit Obama just added $8 trillion to the Federal Deficit, now $19.5 trillion.

I believe there’s a theory, quite popular in some circles, according to which the deficits and debts don’t matter as long as they are denominated in your national currency, the currency you control. These deficits and debts are just some amounts of dollars, supported by what – trust in god?

To what extent this is a reasonable theory, that of course is a controversial matter…

Agreeing with the main idea of the article I would challenge two assertions the author has made. One is that Russia is weaker militarily than the Soviet Union was. In fact Russia is stronger militarily than the Soviet Union used to be. 1. The Putin upgrading of the military has resulted in Russia having today air force equal to or superior to the US. Russian missiles can reach the US with its multiple warheads overcoming any measures. Any field you take, subs, tanks, communications the Russians are equal or slightly inferior in numbers.
More important is the second argument that Russian model is unappealing to other countries unlike the Soviet one. In fact Russia positions itself now as an alternative to globalist imperialist Western dominated world which is quite attractive to many countries. The emergence of BRICS is testimony to that. Moreover, Russia keeps Christianity whereas the West is dumping it. Russia stands for family values whereas the West is dumping the traditional family. Russia is friendly to Islam whereas the West Us and EU are going into hysterical rejection of it. Russia does offer a non Western and yet modernizing alternative for a whole lot of countries in Asia and in Africa and in Latin America. The answer of the US to that new Russian vigor certainly cannot be in strengthening NATO. That is a wrong cure for the wrong diagnosis. NATO cannot save failing Liberal Imperialist model. It is failing both in US and in EU. Trump feels instincively that NATO is outdated but he has not thought through what to do next. The easiest thing to do is to leave things as they are and that is what he is doing, capitulating to the demands of the military industrial complex.

"The US has no genuine vital interests that should conflict with Russia, but Russia Does have vital interests in the Ukraine and Crimea and Serbia." This is completely false. US investments for gas in Ukraine/Crimea are immense and were lost/jeopordized following the coup.

I don’t give a damn about some corporation’s investments. Those do not qualify as vital interests the U.S. regime should be risking blood and treasure for.

Also in the above comments, that Communism was a different matter than the Russia of today and Putin. One thing comes to mind there is that Capitalism was also at a different stage in its life cycle too. Back when Horatio Algers invented the first… wheel or… Patented the first proprietary widget, or WTF?

Capitalism today is about financialism… Communism was about central command of everything economic.

See any trends there… about central control by the few…? Escpecially since they are mostly a lot of the same type

So called small business also called Mainstreet, has been so hammered by the big boxes and franchise corps, and that isn't too much the focus on TV News is it?

there is now a tendency on the part of American liberals to be far more critical of Putin than they were of Soviet Communism. Liberals during the Cold War saw the Soviet planned economic system as being beneficial in some ways. In contrast, liberals find nothing positive in Putin’s system.

This is precisely why we should find something positive in Putin's system. There are probably more committed Marxists on the faculty of any Ivy League university than there are in Putin's government. The enemy during the Cold War was never the historical Russia, but rather the Soviet system - what we used unembarrasedly to describe as "godless Communism." Russia today is neither godless nor Communist. This ought to commend it to us.

Putin is an authoritarian, but seems rather less dreadful than the authoritarian rulers of other states with which this country is on far better terms than are warranted. Consider Saudi Arabia, whose crown prince the U.S. just presented a medal. Saudi Arabia has long been the principal source of funding for Islamic terrorism. It is a country where there is not even a pretense of democracy, where women are not permitted to drive automobiles, and where people are still occasionally beheaded for witchcraft. Then there's the People's Republic of China, which remains a one-party state ruled by its Communist Party. It has been engaged in economic warfare with the United States for the past twenty years, and makes none-too-subtle military threats against neighboring countries. It reportedly caters to medical tourism by scheduling executions of Falun Gong followers and other dissidents to provide fresh organs for transplantation as needed.

American foreign policy is stuck in the 1970s. Our approach toward the problems of the Middle East is still conditioned by a fear of another Arab oil embargo, like the one that happened in 1973-4. Yet the U.S. is much less vulnerable today to such an episode than it was forty years ago. Fracking, horizontal drilling, and the discovery of new reserves have made it the world's largest oil producer, outstripping the Saudis. Why should we continue to kowtow to Middle Eastern dictators, absolute monarchs, and Islamic theocrats? They need foreign exchange to supply the basic needs of their people, and must sell their oil to the rest of the world to get it. Now they have competition, and can't extort from their customers as they once did. American foreign policy should put them on notice of this.

Likewise, the U.S. relationship with the PRC is still founded in the thinking that induced Nixon to make his opening to that country - to exploit its geopolitical and ideological rivalry with the then Soviet Union. But as Trump has so often pointed out, China has taken terrible advantage of the U.S. In the mean time, the Soviet Union has collapsed.

As Lord Palmerston observed, alliances are transitory, but national interests are eternal. More amicable relations with Russia could be useful to American national interests in dealing both with the Middle East and with China. Are the minions of the American deep state so blind that they cannot see this? Or have they been suborned by the governments of these countries as the Clintons were? Perhaps their readiness to attribute the Trump administration's apparent desire for rapprochement with Russia to some sort of crooked scheming reflects their own ways of doing international business.

In order to have national interests, one must first have a coherent nation. In the absence of one, it is easy for special interests to hijack diplomatic and military policy for their own ends.

In order to have national interests, one must first have a coherent nation. In the absence of one, it is easy for special interests to hijack diplomatic and military policy for their own ends.

You just formulated (granted, not the first) one of the most important factors in American demise. US never coalesced into real nation and is in the stage of an extremely fragile equilibrium (for now). As I stated not by once--US foreign policy, which is an unmitigated disaster, is formulated by ethnic and religious mafias and is conducted in the most unprofessional manner. The country in which Kissinger, let alone, Brzezinski pass as geopolitical "gurus" has to start really reassess herself and her place in the world. Taking the red pill (or was it blue? Can never remember) is long overdue.

Also in the above comments, that Communism was a different matter than the Russia of today and Putin. One thing comes to mind there is that Capitalism was also at a different stage in its life cycle too. Back when Horatio Algers invented the first… wheel or… Patented the first proprietary widget, or WTF?

Capitalism today is about financialism… Communism was about central command of everything economic.

See any trends there… about central control by the few…? Escpecially since they are mostly a lot of the same type

So called small business also called Mainstreet, has been so hammered by the big boxes and franchise corps, and that isn’t too much the focus on TV News is it?

In order to have national interests, one must first have a coherent nation. In the absence of one, it is easy for special interests to hijack diplomatic and military policy for their own ends.

In order to have national interests, one must first have a coherent nation. In the absence of one, it is easy for special interests to hijack diplomatic and military policy for their own ends.

You just formulated (granted, not the first) one of the most important factors in American demise. US never coalesced into real nation and is in the stage of an extremely fragile equilibrium (for now). As I stated not by once–US foreign policy, which is an unmitigated disaster, is formulated by ethnic and religious mafias and is conducted in the most unprofessional manner. The country in which Kissinger, let alone, Brzezinski pass as geopolitical “gurus” has to start really reassess herself and her place in the world. Taking the red pill (or was it blue? Can never remember) is long overdue.

I did read this somewhere else and have retained it. If you were the first, I acknowledge my debt to your insight. A lot of European commentators always thought that the U.S. would ultimately fail--that it was just too difficult to "cobble together" such a diverse people into a coherent nation. And they were generally considering just different Europeans. The tragedy of the United States is, I think, that it was on the edge of a coherent nation around 1960, although I think it still would have taken 2-3 generations (60-80 years) to have achieved it, and it would have had to have excluded the blacks. But the attempt to integrate unassimilable Negroes, compounded by the importation of large numbers of people quite different from even the white population circa 1960, has doomed the U.S. Foreign policy incoherence is another symptom of that. Unfortunately, that incoherence is at the root of a lot of global instability.

Note that by making a distinction between Putin’s government and Russia, Friedman implied that the interests of Putin’s “kleptocracy” ran counter to those of Russia.

Imagine for a moment that Friedman hates Putin because Putin does harm to Russia, but Friedman really wants Russia only good. Though many believe that on the contrary Putin has been doing only good to Russia which is difficult to deny, for the statistics speaks for itself, but let us put that question aside for a moment. Then under the current harmful kleptocracy the Russian GDP per capita is $9,000, which makes Russia the 12nd economy in the world, which is not a bad result after all. But imagine if Putin go and nothing would hinder Russia from prospering. Then the Russian GDP might raise, say, to the level of Germany, to $40,000 per capita. But that in turn would make Russia the third world economic empire after the USA and China. Which means, after planet Earth and its resources are limited, Russia would press the USA back from its former areas of hegemony. Or simply put, Russia potentially would do harm to the USA.

So after that being said, Friedman, and all the like, tries to convince us that he is, in fact, a traitor and a crypto-Russian nationalist. Which, of course, is an unbelievable piece of deception. If Friedman hates Putin for anything, it’s certainly not for the kleptocracy, but on the opposite, Friedman really believes Putin makes Russia better and hates him for that, which in turn means Friedman is another lying and deceitful Russophobic piece of meat.

Added to which and sorry to beat a dead horse but the senior Latvian general, when the nation was in the slow process of promoting generals from a pool of disparate colonels told us ( and subsequently went on record last summer in a major Latvian publication ) that during a symposium with senior US representatives to NATO about specific measures that should be taken in the event of a Russian attack that they had agreed with the rearguard and semi guerilla tactics that the lowly Latvians had devised.

However he ( The American representative) stated that supplying the specific armaments needed in the suggested toe to toe or otherwise border protection firepower would be problematic due to the fact that lobbying back home at the highest level gave priority to producing high ticket and other useless endeavors ( F35 anyone?). This is on the record. I would bet green money that this individual has since been retired (with reduced pension).

So then, explain to me how uncoordinated armies with no common language on their own initiative are going to pinch off a modern day version of the Kursk salient in Latvia? What about having your potential ultimate benefactor calling the Baltic States “so called Europe” at the last moment. Sorry, I’m having fun.

In short, Putin’s Russia is widely attacked as a “kleptocracy,” as Friedman put it,

Well, the very kleptocracy put on by the West and by the people like Friedman, the kleptocracy the main beneficiary of which is the West. Does Friedman not understand that Putin’s regime is the most friendly to the West? So friendly that among the current Putin’s mots du jour is “our Western partners”? I do not believe that Friedman is that stupid, then he must’ve been pretending. Again a lying piece of.

and for its institutionalization of traditional values–Christianity, anti-abortion measures, natalism, discrimination against the homosexual life-style, and nationalism—which liberals now lambaste as retrograde and harmful to minorities and women.

I won’t comment on the former, but as for the latter, why is Friedman against the institutionalization of nationalism? Is he against minorities? That is because the only nationalism Putin and his crony minions favor and nurture is the nationalism of minorities. That is Jewish nationalism, Muslim nationalism, Chechen nationalism, Uzbek nationalism, Ukrainian nationalism and what not, everybody’s nationalism except Russian one. For Russian nationalism people in Russia go to prison. Is Friedman anti-Semite after all?

Russia is hated by people from both nodes of contemporary liberalism. From the left it is, as you correctly identify, "for its institutionalization of traditional values–Christianity, anti-abortion measures, natalism, discrimination against the homosexual life-style, and nationalism." From the right it is for Russia's rejection of US led global economic hegemony, and for providing an example to many in other nations, unhappy with the globalists vision of an open-bordered paradise, to sign up to the new political movements opposing it. You go on to say that "Russia .... has an ideology with little global appeal." Don't be so sure. What both the liberal left and the liberal right respectively hate about Russia sounds pretty good to a lot of people.

From the right it is for Russia’s rejection of US led global economic hegemony,

Russia is not rejecting the Western economic hegemony, but rather has injected itself into it. Simply put the Russian political and especially economic elites and their stolen money literally have emigrated to the West. And they are so dependent, they literally cannot live without the West. Their only purpose in live – plunder Russia and live in the comfort of the West – would be ruined. So it is really difficult to understand what confrontation between Russia and the West may be going on if the former is the part of the latter. If anything is going on, it is a grudge by a house slave to his master.

there is now a tendency on the part of American liberals to be far more critical of Putin than they were of Soviet Communism. Liberals during the Cold War saw the Soviet planned economic system as being beneficial in some ways. In contrast, liberals find nothing positive in Putin’s system.

This is precisely why we should find something positive in Putin's system. There are probably more committed Marxists on the faculty of any Ivy League university than there are in Putin's government. The enemy during the Cold War was never the historical Russia, but rather the Soviet system - what we used unembarrasedly to describe as "godless Communism." Russia today is neither godless nor Communist. This ought to commend it to us.

Putin is an authoritarian, but seems rather less dreadful than the authoritarian rulers of other states with which this country is on far better terms than are warranted. Consider Saudi Arabia, whose crown prince the U.S. just presented a medal. Saudi Arabia has long been the principal source of funding for Islamic terrorism. It is a country where there is not even a pretense of democracy, where women are not permitted to drive automobiles, and where people are still occasionally beheaded for witchcraft. Then there's the People's Republic of China, which remains a one-party state ruled by its Communist Party. It has been engaged in economic warfare with the United States for the past twenty years, and makes none-too-subtle military threats against neighboring countries. It reportedly caters to medical tourism by scheduling executions of Falun Gong followers and other dissidents to provide fresh organs for transplantation as needed.

American foreign policy is stuck in the 1970s. Our approach toward the problems of the Middle East is still conditioned by a fear of another Arab oil embargo, like the one that happened in 1973-4. Yet the U.S. is much less vulnerable today to such an episode than it was forty years ago. Fracking, horizontal drilling, and the discovery of new reserves have made it the world's largest oil producer, outstripping the Saudis. Why should we continue to kowtow to Middle Eastern dictators, absolute monarchs, and Islamic theocrats? They need foreign exchange to supply the basic needs of their people, and must sell their oil to the rest of the world to get it. Now they have competition, and can't extort from their customers as they once did. American foreign policy should put them on notice of this.

Likewise, the U.S. relationship with the PRC is still founded in the thinking that induced Nixon to make his opening to that country - to exploit its geopolitical and ideological rivalry with the then Soviet Union. But as Trump has so often pointed out, China has taken terrible advantage of the U.S. In the mean time, the Soviet Union has collapsed.

As Lord Palmerston observed, alliances are transitory, but national interests are eternal. More amicable relations with Russia could be useful to American national interests in dealing both with the Middle East and with China. Are the minions of the American deep state so blind that they cannot see this? Or have they been suborned by the governments of these countries as the Clintons were? Perhaps their readiness to attribute the Trump administration's apparent desire for rapprochement with Russia to some sort of crooked scheming reflects their own ways of doing international business.

“..conditioned by fear of another Arab oil embargo.”

In fact the United States gets very, very little of its oil from the middle east or Persian gulf regions. It is a complete and utter myth that the USA is in any way dependent upon Arab countries for its energy needs. This canard is kept alive by those who want the US involved in that area of the world.

I didn't imply ALL and never do. However. the media on both sides of the pond perpetuate the Nato= national security myth so that means that most of the lazy readers, soft minded patriots and disinterested snowflakes subscribe to the general delusion that they are smug as bugs on paper anyhow.

If you think, even for a nanosecond that Trump and whichever generals he still has standing will trigger WW3 over a tactically and geographically irrelevant nation of 2 million, of whom roughly a third are Russian, directly on the border with the aggressor with scarcely more than a thousand whore mongering 'boots on the ground' then your koolaid is mixed with some pretty potent samogon. Watch that you don't go totally blind.

To bolster your argument with the silly suggestion that possibly Polish, Lithuanian and Portuguese troops would undertake the physical burden of dislodging the aggressor by conventional means (they have no nukes) makes me suspect that you are an inveterate 'gamer'
who should shut down his laptop and stick his/her head out the window once in a while.

I initially suspected that you might be a native Latvian but was dissuaded by that notion in that most native Latvians know that Russia already de facto controls Latvia. Invading has more downside than upside (diplomatically). Why break in and steal your own car when you have the keys and an ownership slip?

A fun exercise in theory would be if Trump and/or any of the top generals were asked to find Latvia on a globe where the country names are removed. Actually the same challenge could be issued to find Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Italy and Canada. It would be like a flashback where Jay Leno walked around and asked random people common knowledge questions. I could never watch those segments. It was like taunting children with Down's Syndrome.

Cheers-

They must have given you really old pīrāgi pastries at the summer camp of the Catskills or whichever wooden Lutheran church near Toronto you attended as a kid. I can’t otherwise explain how you ended up so self hating. Another proof that cosmopolitanism sucks.

I see that the shadow of 1944 still weighs heavily over you. That’s sad. And you see many things through the lense of an exile Balt. The first delusion being that Russia is interested in waging a conventional attack on the Baltics in some kind of an isolated type of scenario. Such an attack would most likely only happen within a larger conflict and in that case, while, yes, the Baltics would be overrun quickly, the problem would no longer be ours, but Russians’ since it would be a huge pain in the ass to establish any sort of a functioning government over utterly hostile populations in the era of digital openness; it would be the problem of Scandinavians who would most likely lose a large chunk of their retirement savings due to the overexposure in the Baltic banking sector, Germans who would have to now meet Russians on the Rhein once again, and Americans, not only whose assets in Europe would be under threat (let’s assume they haven’t yet picked up their assets from Germany, etc) but whose territory and populations would be threatened because if I’m not mistaken Russia’s missiles can reach the US.

When it comes to hybrid warfare, we have our own armies and Security police which would tackle that issue. If you are under any false assumption that Latvian Russians will start some silly rebellion ala Donetsk, rest assured – they won’t, as they are absolutely NOT interested in “burning their own homes” (an actual quote from a Latvian Russian from last year in response to one of those many Anglo derived articles about how a WW3 will begin in Latvia through a “Russian rebellion”), so it would be a real pain in the ass for Russia to organize anything of that sort (surely, Russia is capable of doing it but it would be no easy task – an again, this is something that can be tackled by our interior forces).

Hybrid war and cyber war are still new concepts, but with some training and with innovative approaches the Balts could handle it.

As to your claim that Russia somehow controls the Baltic states, I don’t now what exactly you mean, if you mean they have geostrategic / military advantage (they have that over Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, probably over Japan and Turkey as well), sure, and there is also energy dependency (as it is in all of Europe – although steps are being taken to decouple), but that’s it – other than that Russia has no control either over our parliaments, foreign policies or trade.

I don’t mind decoupling from the US, since 2016 I am no longer a huge fan of that relationship, however, as I said, that would also mean that the US would have to decrease its diplomatic “outreach” in the region (there is a lot that falls under that). Also, in that case not a single Baltic soldier should participate in the “war on terror” and the US can no longer interfere in our relationships with countries such as Iran (and the Baltics should never support any insane Trump ideas about striking Iran!), or our budding commercial relationship with China.

There are alternatives to the US / Russia, the world is no longer the way it was in 1945 or even 1991.

For years, I’ve been a huge fan of increasing military spending and Balts, Nords and potentially some other Germanics will soon increase their military budgets.

And finally, you can’t speak of any conventional Russian invasion without considering where the real geopolitical battle is taking place right now – Ukraine. Just remember that there are now 40 million Ukrainians who dislike Russia (very unfortunate, btw), and the Russian troops are nowhere near Kiev (bad as the situation might be for Ukraine). That is a huge buffer for Poland and the Baltics. The recent speech by president Lukashenka (“Volodya, don’t ruin my evening”) was a real eye opener, too. And by the way, Belarus just bought some gas from Iran (which it may transport through one of the Latvian ports). I give high five to president Lukashenka! Our potential ally in the future Intermarium alliance.

Added to which and sorry to beat a dead horse but the senior Latvian general, when the nation was in the slow process of promoting generals from a pool of disparate colonels told us ( and subsequently went on record last summer in a major Latvian publication ) that during a symposium with senior US representatives to NATO about specific measures that should be taken in the event of a Russian attack that they had agreed with the rearguard and semi guerilla tactics that the lowly Latvians had devised.

However he ( The American representative) stated that supplying the specific armaments needed in the suggested toe to toe or otherwise border protection firepower would be problematic due to the fact that lobbying back home at the highest level gave priority to producing high ticket and other useless endeavors ( F35 anyone?). This is on the record. I would bet green money that this individual has since been retired (with reduced pension).

So then, explain to me how uncoordinated armies with no common language on their own initiative are going to pinch off a modern day version of the Kursk salient in Latvia? What about having your potential ultimate benefactor calling the Baltic States "so called Europe" at the last moment. Sorry, I'm having fun.

Cheers-

with no common language

You’re kidding me, right? Baltic soldiers are famous for being trilingual, some of them even speak Nordic languages.

And just another little note, Timur (funny nickname you have, reminds me of this Soviet pioneer hero back in the 80s), – I would suggest taking the world map and turning it so that the Arctic falls in the center. You’ll see that Estonia and Latvia fall into the sub-Arctic zone. Just 10 years ago, all the talk about the security in the High North during the receptions hosted by the Nordic countries seemed like an interesting yet exotic topic to me, today it’s becoming more and more real. In 20-30 years it might become even more real and tangible. Hah, there is a reason why Latvia is a member of the KHL – the Russian hockey league.

In order to have national interests, one must first have a coherent nation. In the absence of one, it is easy for special interests to hijack diplomatic and military policy for their own ends.

You just formulated (granted, not the first) one of the most important factors in American demise. US never coalesced into real nation and is in the stage of an extremely fragile equilibrium (for now). As I stated not by once--US foreign policy, which is an unmitigated disaster, is formulated by ethnic and religious mafias and is conducted in the most unprofessional manner. The country in which Kissinger, let alone, Brzezinski pass as geopolitical "gurus" has to start really reassess herself and her place in the world. Taking the red pill (or was it blue? Can never remember) is long overdue.

I did read this somewhere else and have retained it. If you were the first, I acknowledge my debt to your insight. A lot of European commentators always thought that the U.S. would ultimately fail–that it was just too difficult to “cobble together” such a diverse people into a coherent nation. And they were generally considering just different Europeans. The tragedy of the United States is, I think, that it was on the edge of a coherent nation around 1960, although I think it still would have taken 2-3 generations (60-80 years) to have achieved it, and it would have had to have excluded the blacks. But the attempt to integrate unassimilable Negroes, compounded by the importation of large numbers of people quite different from even the white population circa 1960, has doomed the U.S. Foreign policy incoherence is another symptom of that. Unfortunately, that incoherence is at the root of a lot of global instability.

Good thing he's in good company because otherwise all that jackass has is a mouth. He has no brains, no balls, no spine.

The only things good about him are that he says some good stuff, and he isn't Hillary the Beast.

I have little doubt the fool just got his marching orders from the 'yahu. Heaven help us!

“I have little doubt the fool just got his marching orders from the ‘yahu. Heaven help us!”
Yeah I hate to admit it but seeing ‘yahoo’ absolutely giddy in meeting with Trump you’re right!
Hopefully Trump is using this as a ruse to follow ‘America first’ policies but I have my doubts.

Does anyone not believe that the intention all along was to enroll Ukraine into NATO? Installation of bases and then the positioning of missiles were to follow later. They thought the Russians would just roll over and play dead. The Russians would never allow something as valuable as Crimea to be scooped up by NATO and turned into a threat against them. Thus we have all the high-pitched screaming about how they invaded Ukraine and they’re aggressors and the like. NATO is at this point something of a mafia protection racket. It allows the US to tap into the resources of the member countries and makes them subordinate to the US. It’s dangerous for a weaker country in Europe not to be a member as happened with Yugoslavia. It might also be hazardous to try to leave.

The supposedly proud nation of Poland charmed by "Western values" (a la Frau von der Leyen): http://thesaker.is/zmiana-piskorski-and-the-case-for-polish-liberation/Comment section: 'Zmiana stands out as the exception to the rule that Polish society’s “intellectual capacity” is proof positive of the basest Polish jokes, as the following passage aptly makes clear: “What about the massive genocide against Poles at the hands of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during the Second World War? The Russians organized it, Poland’s ‘defense’ minister claims. No matter the fact that Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader Dmitry Yarosh, whose neo-Nazi paramilitaries were trained, armed, and funded by the Polish government, has openly said: ‘As for the Poles, we’ll do them a second Katyn massacre’.” - To which the brave Poles delightedly reply: You’re welcome. We will blame Russia for it. Done deal."

Has anybody heard a peep from Anti-Defamation League re the US support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine? Well: "...the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center didn’t support blocking funding for neo-Nazis..." Beautiful. This is something worth discussing when ziocons cry about Holocaust. Should be plastered in each and every newspaper. http://governmentdeniesknowledge.com/never-again-why-is-the-western-world-supporting-neo-nazis/

Solzhenitsyn, somewhere in 200 yrs together, said that both Russia and the jewish bolshevists had to own up to their responsibilities, as had Germany with the Nuremberg trials, of which he spoke with deep admiration.

But while that miracle happens, nothing like celebrating what is good about german culture:

Solzhenitsyn, somewhere in 200 yrs together, said that both Russia and the jewish bolshevists had to own up to their responsibilities

he’s a hero of mine Veritatis, and he was right.

to blame Germany and Germans for the crimes of the Nazis, while ignoring the even more egregious crimes of the (often Jewish) Soviets, leaves creation and the human experience in a constant and perpetual state of iniquity

And it is that grinding iniquity that is driving the world to yet another monstrous global conflict between Russia and Eastern Europe.

vanity seems to be the ultimate human folly, and Russians today would drag the world to nuclear war – rather than admit that under the thrall of the Soviet Fiend, their ancestors too acted like beasts and savages.

A full accounting (without rancor or insult) would go a long way towards healing the world, and disarming the Fiend of his devil’s tricks to foment his eternal and Satanic wars

(thanks for the links Veritatis. I’ve been to that church in Dresden. The Church of Our Lady [Frauenkirche]. Part of the story is that the London-based man who constructed the new dome for the church was the son of a man who participated in the bombing, thereby symbolically demonstrating a healing of sorts. The world could use more of that kind of thing, I’d reckon)

We don’t need to be slaughtering each other. The sixty million people who died horrifically during and after WWII did not have to die.

The concept applies to WW1 as well. Both were absolutely unnecessary.

We don’t need to be slaughtering each other. The sixty million people who died horrifically during and after WWII did not have to die.

The concept applies to WW1 as well. Both were absolutely unnecessary

and it will apply to the next one as well, and now we can all see just how preventable all these wars really are. And how they’re always foisted upon us by a tiny handful of cowards and liars, who use their ill-gotten lucre to corrupt the governments and install scum like John McCain to do their dirty work for them.

If there is a war with Iran or Russia, it will be based on lies to benefit Zionists, just like the World Wars were based on lies to benefit the Zionists.

We don’t need to be slaughtering each other. The sixty million people who died horrifically during and after WWII did not have to die.

The concept applies to WW1 as well. Both were absolutely unnecessary

and it will apply to the next one as well, and now we can all see just how preventable all these wars really are. And how they're always foisted upon us by a tiny handful of cowards and liars, who use their ill-gotten lucre to corrupt the governments and install scum like John McCain to do their dirty work for them.

If there is a war with Iran or Russia, it will be based on lies to benefit Zionists, just like the World Wars were based on lies to benefit the Zionists.

More on the same topic:http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-american-president-that-understood.htmlJFK: "Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland--a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago."

Could we lure the war profiteers and neocons to one place and lock them together for a few months so that they could sort out their deepest desires without harming the humanity at large?

In fact the United States gets very, very little of its oil from the middle east or Persian gulf regions. It is a complete and utter myth that the USA is in any way dependent upon Arab countries for its energy needs. This canard is kept alive by those who want the US involved in that area of the world.

Does anyone not believe that the intention all along was to enroll Ukraine into NATO? Installation of bases and then the positioning of missiles were to follow later. They thought the Russians would just roll over and play dead. The Russians would never allow something as valuable as Crimea to be scooped up by NATO and turned into a threat against them. Thus we have all the high-pitched screaming about how they invaded Ukraine and they're aggressors and the like. NATO is at this point something of a mafia protection racket. It allows the US to tap into the resources of the member countries and makes them subordinate to the US. It's dangerous for a weaker country in Europe not to be a member as happened with Yugoslavia. It might also be hazardous to try to leave.

The supposedly proud nation of Poland charmed by “Western values” (a la Frau von der Leyen): http://thesaker.is/zmiana-piskorski-and-the-case-for-polish-liberation/
Comment section:
‘Zmiana stands out as the exception to the rule that Polish society’s “intellectual capacity” is proof positive of the basest Polish jokes, as the following passage aptly makes clear:
“What about the massive genocide against Poles at the hands of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during the Second World War? The Russians organized it, Poland’s ‘defense’ minister claims. No matter the fact that Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader Dmitry Yarosh, whose neo-Nazi paramilitaries were trained, armed, and funded by the Polish government, has openly said: ‘As for the Poles, we’ll do them a second Katyn massacre’.” – To which the brave Poles delightedly reply: You’re welcome. We will blame Russia for it. Done deal.”

JFK: “Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland–a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.”

Could we lure the war profiteers and neocons to one place and lock them together for a few months so that they could sort out their deepest desires without harming the humanity at large?

If only these pinkos had been as dedicated to opposing paleo-SOVIET imperialism, aggression, and oppression. Rings a bit hollow now.

‘I am convinced that the question of war or peace hangs upon the Soviet willingness to engage in a general war, and not on the strength of the local defenses in any particular part of the world,’ he [Lippmann] wrote.”

Mightn’t the former be influenced by the latter?

Lippmann made a considerable effort to stop the development of NATO. Steel writes: “Lippmann put forth a six-page single spaced document on the German problem for John Foster Dulles to take to the Paris foreign ministers meeting in May 1949. In the memo Lippmann urged the demilitarization and neutralization of Germany, along with the withdrawal of all foreign troops. This plan, he argued, would keep German nationalists in check and remove the need for NATO.”[6] In short, the Red Army’s occupation of central Europe, in Lippmann’s view, only existed because of the existence of Western troops in the vicinity. And if the Western troops were removed, Russia would reciprocate and, in Lippmann’s view, “there would be no more Russian problem today than there had been for a century.”[7]

I wonder where this guy kept his folded Hammer and Sickle flags; in the closet, or under his pillow?

All of the criticism I have for NATO is through the lens of American interests. I couldn’t care less about how Russia feels about it. They deserve what they get, after turning half of Europe into a jail for half a century.

And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.”

I agree with the sentiment, but not as it applies to Russian security interests.

Russia had historical reasons for being worried about strong enemies on its borders since it had been invaded in the past.

Yeah and Europe has historical reasons to have a strong defense against Russia, since Russia has imposed totalitarian rule on states in Europe in the past. Not turning countries into jails is a good start on not having people hate you.

Friedman even denied that Putin sought to protect Russia. “By seizing Crimea and stoking up nationalism, Putin was not protecting Russia from NATO,” Friedman asserted. “He was protecting himself from the viruses of E.U. accountability and transparency, which, if they took hold in Ukraine, could spread to Moscow, undermining his kleptocracy.”

I see Crimea (and even Ukraine and Belarus generally) as separate from the rest of this conversation. Ukraine might as well be Russia, at least in part, to my way of thinking. I see the Crimea mess as one created by the fall of the USSR, and Putin’s solution is fine by me.

Moreover, there is now a tendency on the part of American liberals to be far more critical of Putin than they were of Soviet Communism.

Amen. Leftists hate Trump far more than they have ever hated Stalin, and cuckservatives hate him far more than they ever hated Obama.

Use of multiple, non-Anonymous handles for commenting on this webzine is strongly discouraged, and your secret (real or fictitious) email allows you to authenticate your commenter-identity, preventing others from assuming it, accidentally or otherwise.

Therefore, keeping your Name+Email combination is important, and the 'Remember' feature saves it for you as a cookie on your device/browser.

Also, activating the 'Remember' feature enables the Agree/Disagree/LOL/Troll buttons on all comments.

Email Replies to my Comment

Body of Comment

Submitted comments become the property of The Unz Review and may be republished elsewhere at the sole discretion of the latter